Abstract:
This dissertation deals with the question of the conditions on the formation of interrogative wh-phrases in German. The background for this question is the
observation that wh-expressions as the lexical basis of interrogative wh-phrases underlie certain configurational restrictions. In particular this is shown in cases where the wh-phrase includes more material than the wh-expression itself, cf. ‘wessen Bücher’ vs. ‘*Bücher wessen’. The theoretical framework is provided by the updated version of Generative Grammar, the Minimalist Program of Chomsky (1995). The main claim of this thesis is that the syntactic structure of interrogative wh-phrases, as well as of (wh-)interrogative sentences cannot be described without recourse to an abstract feature [+wh]. This abstract feature [+wh] induces within a local domaine identical syntactic properties in both cases, namely ‘saturation’ by an element with an appropriate feature – in the case of interrogative wh-phrases: by a lexical wh-item. Saturation of the abstract feature [+wh] is restricted to two prominent configurations: the ‘spec-head’-configuration on the one hand, and the ‘head-head’-configuration, on the other hand.